A flirtatious window washer, on a skyscraper, has
his head
lopped
off while on the job. One cop asks another: "How did
that happen?" He
answers:
"I dunno, maybe his head came loose." A tenured
college professor is
found
flayed in his hotel room while on a visit to NYC, as
the cops rule out
suicide since there is no reason for a tenured teacher
to kill himself.
A woman sunbathing in the nude on the roof of her
building is attacked
by a giant bird and is carried off to be flayed and
dumped on the roof
storage area of the Chrysler Building, where the birds
are nesting and
hatching future attacking birds in giant eggs. The
question becomes: Is
there a connection between the flayer and the birds?

Detectives Shepherd (David Carradine) and Powell
(Richard
Roundtree)
are assigned the case, and Shepherd immediately puts
two and two
together
and comes up with this logical deduction that this
must be a ritual
killing.
So he sees the Museum of Natural History's curator and
hears his
explanations
on the myths of sacrifice and it now becomes obvious,
even to a skeptic
like himself, that this must be the work of Q, which
stands for
Quetzecoatl,
the flying Aztec god. The bird can be prayed back into
existence and
kept
alive with the blood that must be given willingly by
the victim, or
else
the ritual performed by the priest (the flayer) is
meaningless and the
bird or god can't gain strength from the blood.

Meanwhile, petty criminal, nerd, ex-junkie and
ex-convict,
the fast-talking
Jimmy Quinn (Michael Moriarty), tries out for a piano
singer's gig in
the
bar his girlfriend Joan (Candy) works at. He is using
a piece a black
man
who killed seven white men taught him how to play when
he was doing
hard
prison time; but, he doesn't get the job. So he takes
the other job he
was offered earlier on in the day, to drive a getaway
car in a jewelry
heist. Quinn is a born loser, so natch the job goes
sour. The hoods
make
him come into the store with them and give him a gun,
even though he
asserts
that wasn't part of the deal. When things get fouled
up inside the
store,
he walks out with the diamonds; but, doesn't have the
keys to the car.
He then gets hit by a cab as the bag full of jewels
disappears in the
street,
whereas he will have to walk with a limp for the rest
of the film. He
will
be pursued by the mobsters for the diamonds and be
tracked down by the
police because the hoods who got caught rat him out.
But in hiding out
from the mob, who think that he still has the jewels,
he inadvertently
stumbles upon where the menacing bird nests.

This is real funny stuff. The special effects for
this
low-budget
film are surprisingly well-done. That "fuckin' bird,"
which is how it
is
referred to by NYC's finest causes them to scratch
their heads over
this
one. They gather 43 eyewitness reports of blood
dripping on them from
skyscrapers,
and hear about a huge bird carrying off construction
workers; and, on a
luxury building rooftop, a swimmer is swooped away by
a huge bird in
front
of everyone else in the pool.

Quinn while running from the two hoods, who are in
pursuit
of the
jewels, leads them right into the claws of the nesting
bird. Quinn
giggles
at their misfortune, watching them being eaten to
death; and, he
suddenly
realizes he has his meal ticket, if he plays his cards
right. When the
police question him about the jewelry heist, but are
really more
concerned
about all those mysterious killings, he comes forward
with his proposal
to help them solve that case.

What is amazing is how well the story and the
routine
investigation
of the cops into this bizarre newspaper headline story
go together.
Carradine
takes it all in as just another day at the office,
while Quinn couldn't
be more goofier and likable, as he smiles like he won
the lottery when
he blackmails the city into giving him a million bucks
for his info; he
says that he also wants a Nixon-like pardon.

Powell, as the straight, gung-ho cop, has the honor
of
teaming up
with an undercover cop, disguised as a mime, as they
chase a lunatic
priest
over NYC rooftops.

I loved the explanation given of God: It's an
invisible
force we
fear and in our vanity, we try to make human.

All you have to remember about this film is that
there are
no hidden
messages or deep symbolic meanings to ponder.